AstraZeneca widens cancer push with up to $500 million Heptares deal

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[August 06, 2015]  LONDON (Reuters) - AstraZeneca expanded its push into cancer immunotherapy on Thursday by striking a deal potentially worth more than $500 million with Sosei's biotech unit Heptares, giving it rights to an experimental treatment.

AstraZeneca said it would pay an initial $10 million for exclusive global rights to HTL-1071, a so-called adenosine A2A receptor antagonist, and could pay more than $500 million if the product is a commercial success.

The companies will also collaborate to discover further A2A receptor-blocking compounds for use in cancer immunotherapy.

AstraZeneca is betting on new cancer treatments to revive its fortunes as older medicines go off patent.

British-based Heptares specializes in work on an important class of proteins known as G-protein-coupled receptors, or GPCRs, which serve as a main conduit for chemicals to get past a cell's membrane and be taken up by a cell.

It was acquired by Japan's Sosei in February for up to $400 million.

The importance of GPCRs was recognized in 2012 when the Nobel Prize for chemistry was awarded to two American scientists who pioneered research in the field.

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(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by David Holmes)

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